CUTTING A MORAL PATH THROUGH BAD LAW 1

Re "Juries Should Leave Lawmaking to the Lawmakers," Commentary, Feb. 13:
Norah Vincent clearly doesn't understand what the founding fathers
understood so well -- that government is liable to make all sorts of abusive
and bad laws. That's why they specifically left in place a procedure (jury
trial) that could have 12 of your neighbors (supposedly reasonable people)
sit around and go: "Hey, wait a minute. This is silly. Let's use a little
common sense here."

With Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and the Bush administration trampling on the
Constitution and suspending our rights piece by piece, jury nullification
may turn out to be one of the few weapons we have to fight back with. I
suppose Vincent would have been a big supporter of the Third Reich's
anti-Semitism laws and our own Jim Crow laws; after all, they were passed
and enacted legally, and people should have quietly obeyed them.

Richard L. Berger

Los Angeles